


anything like me

by EasyPeasyPanic



Series: all of my founders era fics [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Drabble, Mentions of Zetsu, Obito reminds him of himself and Hashirama, Obito's time with Madara, Self-Esteem Issues, Unrequited Love, this was gonna be a full blown fic but i got bored and didn't finish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23879188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EasyPeasyPanic/pseuds/EasyPeasyPanic
Summary: He reminds him far too much of Hashirama, and maybe that's why he gets some sort of joy out watching the boy struggle.____Madara's thoughts of Obito after he saves him
Relationships: Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara (Unrequited)
Series: all of my founders era fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718458
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69
Collections: why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	anything like me

* * *

He reminds him far too much of Hashirama, and maybe that's why he gets some sort of _joy_ out watching the boy struggle. Out of watching him pant and groan, trying to use limbs that aren't his (not naturally) to stand or walk, struggling and forcing himself up only to fall like a newborn foal. 

Madara remembers seeing hatchlings with more talent and grace, but his falconry days are long behind him in a life that doesn't seem to be his anymore, that doesn't fit with his memories or his dreams, and he sets that aside for now. Most of the time, _most_ of the time, he can close his eyes and escape, because he's aged and he's been broken down by time, and sustained or not, it takes a toll. His limbs ache with a constant chill, and sitting up makes it hard to breath through the pain radiating through his back and ribs but laying or standing only makes it all the worse. He's exhausted, more so than the worst fight with Hashirama or the worst training session with his father, though those memories have dimmed and faded too. But even losing himself in thought can be repetitive, a nuisance worse than bodily ailments, and he forces himself back to the present before fresh pains wells up behind his forehead and eyes, a pressurized headache. 

And he watches the boy fail _again and again_. Easily fail, stumbling down onto his knees, hitting the ground and being unable to get himself back up, but smiling his way through it all. A wide grin, far too eager to please and much too emotional to be genuine, just like Hashirama, just like that blundering fool with his big bright eyes and his overly hopeful smile, with big hopeless promises. 

Always so big, always so _real_ , Hashirama could have sold him his own cloak if he'd put his mind to it. He wasn't persuasive in the way that most were with a charming smile and drawled out words, but he had so much energy. He put his entire being into what he said, lacing his soul and his dreams in every word. _A place just for us, just for our brothers, just for all of us. We'll all be together and friends!_

And if Madara had a choice, if Madara didn't have plans and a way of putting this kid to some kind of use, he'd take a sick kind of triumph out of snuffing out the boy's life like extinguishing a candle. Because every word he heard out of the boy's lips were like the screeching of metal on metal, the thrill of battle interrupted by a poorly timed kunai scraping against the length of a sword. 

"When I get out of here, I'm going to find my team. It'll be great-- me and Kakashi are going to be better friends this time, I'll make sure of it! The whole team's going to be together!"

And isn't that just a perfect world? A world where the boy actually manages to pull himself up off the cold ground, actually manages to stand up on his own two feet and walk out, or at the very least managed to crawl his way back to a village that resented the blood pounding through his veins. 

"Oh?" Madara said, tilting his head. "If they cared so much for you, wouldn't they have come back for your body? Discovered you were gone and come for you?"

The boy flinched back, as if he'd been struck hard. His eye went down, staring down at his one open palm, his lower lip quivering with emotion. Overdramatic. Unrefined. Overemotional.

(Far too much like Hashirama for comfort.)

"Gramps," The boy says coldly. His fist clenched. His lip's still shaking, but his voice is steady. "Please, just shut _up_." 

**_____ **

_Warm hands in his own, a brush of lips against his forehead, just enough to make him smile. Madara bristles, upholds his reputation and his usual temper, but can't fight back the glee that claws through his belly when Hashirama smiles down at him. The man chatters away, mindlessly and without much variety in topic. His hands are clutching Madara's tightly, and his eyes are blown wide. So close, he's so close. Madara can imagine how easily this could turn to his favor. He imagines gentle pecks, soft and quick, and Hashirama's laughing through them, laughing and whispering between each kiss._

_But that doesn't happen. Madara isn't confident enough to learn in for the first kiss, and Hashirama might be holding his hands, but it isn't a lover's touch._

_'We finally have our peace!' He exclaims, as if Madara doesn't know that. As if Madara hasn't finally felt okay for the first time in years over the thought of getting to finally learn the names of the Uchiha children._

_(He never learns their names, not when they're young. Doesn't attend birthdays, no matter the invitation, or celebrate healthy births. Madara couldn't send them off to fight and die if he knew their names. But now they would live.)_

_'You'll be a great leader.' Hashirama tells him softly, hands against his waist, tugging at the end of his mantle. His other hand waves around animatedly, emphasizing each word. He smells of sweat and freshly-cut grass and Madara hadn't even known he'd missed this. Missed him._

_It was like coming home. Like he could breathe for the first time in centuries, pulled out of the water before he drowned, it was like--_

"Ha! I told you I could do it!"

Madara can't handle the boy. He can't handle the cheering, the grinning. The _noise_. The boy's tiresomely loud, desperately clinging to his chatter with Zetsu, and he's standing. It makes his head pound, his temples pulsing with familiar pains, some old and some new. He can't even be left to his own sleep in the boy's presence, can't even rest well, can't even decay in peace, like a final irony. 

"You see me, Gramps?" The boy calls out, not quite hateful. Not even spiteful, more tiredly proud. He stands on his unshaking legs with knees that don't buckle under him. He takes a step, two more, then a full stride, cautiously though. 

_'Do you see me, Madara? Look, look, I told you I was great Taijutsu! And rock skipping, too!'_

Madara scoffs, "A toddler can learn to walk. What did you accomplish exactly?" He snaps, cruel and biting and meant to hurt. Words had never managed to Hashirama, they deflected off of him like rain drops on an umbrella, slipping away. 

But the boy's face crumbles. He ducks his head, keeping his face turned away from Madara. (Was he crying? It wouldn't be the first time he's made a child cry, just the first time he's felt good about it.) The Zetsu stop with their loud encouragement, the entire place falling silent. The boy takes another step forward. 

"Gramps," He says again, his voice bordering on tearful. "Shut up. Just... shut up." There's more bite to it, more anger. Like he's holding in his rage, his fury, like he's biting back an argument. Madara wants to goad him like he once did with Tobirama, to nudge him closer and closer into the inevitable burst of fury and shouting, but he's too exhausted. His limbs are shaky, his breathing hurts his chest. Like shards of glass were mixing with the oxygen around him, clawing its way into his lungs, and he's tired. 

So tired. 

(He wants to dream of Hashirama again.)

"Impress me then, and I'll be kinder with my words."

"I'll get better and better. And then I'm going home." The boy tells him curly, one fist clenched at his side so tightly that his knuckles pale. "I have people waiting for me."

"Will you truly?" Madara asked, amused by the false determination, the senseless hope. _Home, this is our new home, Dara, where we'll be happy and have families._

"I'm going back to Konoha!" The boy swears. "I'm going home."

(And doesn't everyone wish to go home?)

**_____ **

It stirs something deep inside to watch the boy. To watch him stretch unnaturally, to twist his limbs and rotate his body, to balance on his legs and regain his mobility.

(A part of him envies that. He's too weak now to walk far without his cane, and even that tires him out far too quickly for comfort.)

"See me, Gramps?" The Uchiha boy asks again and again, no matter how insignificant the accomplishment. Every movement was to be admired, every twist of his ankles, every first step each day, every roll and sit up. It infuriated a hatred in his belly that he'd long since let fall into a simmer. "Did you see that? I'm doing better with my stamina."

"What stamina?" Madara replies, just to get the satisfying glee of watching the hope slip from the boy's face. 

The face that can _almost_ twist into finer, more fixed features. He can almost see brown eyes on the bandages, almost see a bowl cut in the growing black hair, almost _almost almost._ But mostly he sees it in the smile, far too determined. Like Hashirama on the day he marched right up to the Yamanaka Clan's door to try once again and pursue their signature for a more agreeable ceasefire than what outrageous demands they'd originally sent. 

Hashirama had come back victorious that day, laughing and dancing his way through their village of paper lanterns, tents, and half-built structures.

This boy will get no such victory. He may walk, but he is not strong. He isn't fast. For all his ambitions and hopes and determination, he won't make it out of this place, not without Madara's permission, and not on his own merit alone. It settles in his mind well, to watch him struggle and to watch him suffer at his own insufficiency. It's easier to break apart emotionally in freewill than with Madara's assistance.

"I'm going to go home." He tells him, _determined._

' _You're going to be Hokage, Madara!'_

Lies. Lies. Lies. There's not a chance in whatever worse Hells there are than reality that the boy will ever see that village again alive, unless it is seen in familiar hatred. Madara scowls, chilled and teetered on annoyance. 

"I'm going home to Rin and Kakashi. We'll get along better this time around." The boy says dreamily, as if he were talking about a better world. As if he were talking about a world without war, a village of peace, two enemy clans extending hands in friendship after decades of hatred. As if he was naïve enough to believe the world would allow him some reprieve. "You won't make me abandon my goal just because _you're_ hateful. I'm going home to my friends."

One of the Zetsu chirps in, "And we're going to learn to poop!" 

"And that!" The Uchiha boy insists, although he does blink dumbly and gives the humanoid a very distinct _look_. "Oh come on, Guruguru, we've talked about this." 

"We have!"

"Why?"

"What?" The boy drops down hard, laying his hand in the dirt, letting his fingers spread wide across the cold ground. "Talk about why we shouldn't talk about... _poop_? Because it's nasty, that's why--"

"Why do you want to return home to your friends so greatly?" He questioned, though his stomach twists at the thought of an answer. 

(Hashirama's answer.)

He blinks, tilting his head. "Because I love them. They're the...the closest thing I have to a real family! Even Bakashi."

( _Why not come away with me? Abandon that failure of a village and let us find our own peace?_

_Madara, what are you talking about? I have a family, I can't just leave. Please, just come home. You're like my family too.)_

Madara shakes his head slowly, scoffing. 

"Family doesn't abandon you." 

_People you love don't shove a blade through your back._

The boy's Sharingan spins dangerously, his emotions forcing it to react in turn, but Madara doesn't find anything to fear in its gaze. 

"Did yours?" He asks softly. "Is that why're you so hateful?"

The urge to snap the boy's neck settles into his bones, to set him aflame and waste all his efforts. Instead, Madara puts a hand against his scythe and says nothing else. He has a headache to tend to, and unfinished sleep to continue on with. 

**_____ **

"Are you really Uchiha Madara?" The boy says quietly. He's got his knees pressed against his chest, and his chin resting there, one arm against his shin. The Zetsu are gone, and they've been left to a tense, familiar silence. 

Madara stares at him, "What purpose would it serve to lie?" He questions, but the boy doesn't shrink away from him this time. The old man sits straighter, examining the boy curiously. 

"Oh." He says, and his voice shifts to actual glee. "Oh, Minato-sensei isn't going to believe me. And Bakashi? _Never_. The real Uchiha Madara."

It's an inch under his skin. Not knowing. He remembers the feeling even when he was younger, the prickles under his skin like panic whenever there was a secret he wasn't privy to. A squirming and wiggling beneath his flesh, burrowing in and sending uncomfortable tingles across his body at the worst times. Not knowing back then meant certain death, there was no room for error when the whispers avoided you. An ambush, a new treaty, a betrayal. Madara always praised himself in _knowing_ anything he could. 

(He shouldn't have been like that, not always. Perhaps his heart wouldn't have broken so fast if he hadn't eavesdropped on Tobirama and Hashirama. Perhaps his ignorant bliss would've been best for all.)

Goosebumps prickle against his skin. Old thoughtfulness and weariness crawl across him like the sugar ants, and he gives the boy a once over. 

"Tell me about your team," He demands. They must be something else, for the boy to speak of them in such reverance. For him to have such faith and love for them, when they have yet to search for him. To even realize his body wasn't rotting beneath boulders miles away; did they not bother to even retrieve it? 

Blind, the boy was blind. Just like Hashirama, putting too much love and hope and _optimism_ into people when they offered nothing concrete in return. These new thoughts did little to quell his temper. 

"Why do you wanna know?" He asks hotly. "You've never asked me anything before. Not even my name."

(Weapons don't need names. You'll get attached to it.)

"Humor an old man," Madara replies. "You speak of them so much, you've gained my interest."

His face brightens up as he begins to describe his team, and to his credit, he doesn't reveal as much as Madara assumed he would. He speaks of his teacher, his prowess and his leadership and his _kindness_ , and of an unnamed wife that made bentos for lunch. 

The boy flushes red, "Rin is...she's so _strong._ You have to be, you know, to be a medic. But she's even stronger! And pretty! And smarter than me, a lot smarter." He flusters, shaking his head. "But, uh, she likes Kakashi. Which-- ugh, I wanted to beat his face in, but I don't blame her. He's...better than me. Younger and stronger, and I can't compare usually. Although I'll _die_ before I ever tell that bastard that!" 

Ah, so he's pining after that girl. Madara stays silent as he continues on with his stories. He describes his team's dynamics, how angry and hot-headedly he would go after a boy that outclassed him. How much this boy, Kakashi, infuriated him with his skill, but also made him work so much harder.

"I'm not going to lose to him anymore." The boy swears, for the thousandth time since he's been kept here. He sits up, slinging his legs down and leaning off the bed. "We're going to be friends. Me and Rin and him."

And then he begins to babble on and on about his dreams, his desire to be Hokage (a goal Madara hadn't wanted, but had tried to get nonetheless), and completely loses track of everything he was trying to tell Madara. He seemed lost in nostalgia, and throughout his words, Madara's stomach twists more and more. 

New anger makes him freeze, and he fights against his own self-hatred because perhaps the boy _doesn't_ remind him of Hashirama. 

He reminds him of himself. Always second best, always the weaker one, always struggling to amount himself to his rival. Madara tunes the boy out, turning away, taking deep breaths. Again and again, just like this pathetic boy, losing to his better, to Hashirama. Being lesser, never being _enough_. (Not enough to save Izuna, not enough to win Hashirama's heart, not even enough to beat Hashirama in a fight. Never enough.)

_But she likes Kakashi…_

Hashirama's wedding to Uzumaki Mito had broken his heart, shredded every lingering feeling that Madara thought the Senju held for him. Had he misinterpreted every moment they'd had together? Home, Hashirama had become _home_ to him, his family after Izuna's death, the last thing he could cling to, and he'd been betrayed again. And again. And _again._ Hashirama whispered to him of sharing a dream, sharing a future. Becoming Hokage, and he had let Madara _hope_ and think about that future before he snatched it away. Took away his leadership, took away his heart, married that red-haired witch, and then…

Then did the one thing Madara had never thought him capable of. Stabbed him through the back, betrayed him, destroyed him. Fresh anger surges through him as he stares at the chattering boy, and sees only himself in him. Naïve, disgustingly hopeful, clinging to people that would ultimately betray him, cut him out just as they always did to the Uchiha. 

"Zetsu," He says lowly. In moments, two yellow eyes materialized beside him, and Madara's mind reels. "I need you to do something for me." He orders, and a sense of horrible joy fills him for a brief moment. He would break this child himself, show him the world as it was, not as he believed. Those teammates would ultimately turn on him, turn on each other when the oppurtunity arose, dogs always go after each other's throat, didn't they? And he would be the one to show the boy the truth. 

He would be the one to destroy himself. If this Uchiha reminded him of his past self, he would rid him of that love and hope. Madara would rebuild him again in his own image, for his own purposes. 

(And at the end of all this, perhaps give them both a better world.)

* * *


End file.
